These previously unseen photographs capture the astonishing moment a 15-year-old schoolboy braved soldiers' automatic gunfire in a daring escape across the Berlin Wall.

East Berliner Frank Krause made a break for freedom because he wanted to flee his totalitarian state existence and troubled school life to join his aunt in the city's capitalist West.

Because he was a minor his official request had been refused.

So, one day in 1976, he used a home-made ladder to run the gauntlet of gunfire that claimed the lives of Peter Fechter and so many others.

Remarkably Krause made it to the West and survived with only a grazed leg to show for it.

His luck did not last, though, and the authorities sent him back home a few days later.

Unbeknown to Krause, his lethal gamble was caught on camera by an off-duty US soldier who was snapping away from a viewing platform on the western side of the wall.

The photos taken by Harry Knights - a US Army specialist in West Berlin - were immediately confiscated by the US military authorities.

Frank Krause climbs down from the Berlin Wall after his crossing (Image: Harry Knights)

Knights' photographs were simply intended to show everyday life behind the wall.

But then he focused in on a boy acting suspiciously; the boy walks alongside wall with a home-made ladder. The same boy then finds himself in the middle of the death strip - his ladder now half-broken. Finally the boy clambers to safety.

Before today the photos have only ever been published in a small military ex-servicemans newsletter. When the story was reported by Berlin newspapers at the time it was without the confiscated snaps.

However, they were recently re-discovered by BBC journalist turned best-selling crime author David Young who tracked down Harry Knights; the photographer is now a retired pastor in the US.

Despite Knights' and the Daily Mirror's efforts to discover what happened to the boy in the photograph, Frank Krause's whereabouts today remain a mystery.

Here David Young tells in fascinating detailing the astonishing story.

The first pictures of Frank on the East German side of the wall (Image: Harry Knights)

"A plot twist reviewers criticised as unbelievable"

Reading the heart-rending story of the 17-year-old California girl who bravely fled the home where she and her twelve siblings were held captive in appalling conditions by their parents recently defied the image of a snowflake generation addicted to their smartphones.

She’d plotted her courageous escape for two years – and when she climbed out of the window of the Turpin family home, her sister turned back in fear – believing her parents would kill her.

The news reminded me of another little-known story of a teenager’s remarkable courage in escaping captivity.

It was from an oppressive country, rather than an oppressive family, and across a fortified border where scores of people lost their lives. The hated and infamous Berlin Wall.

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When I discovered a couple of years ago the remarkable escape of 15-year-old Frank Krause on a grey November day in 1976 I couldn’t quite believe it, and I still can’t.

It inspired a key plot point in my series of crime thrillers set in East Germany (Stasi Child, Stasi Wolf and now A Darker State) – a plot twist which some reviewers have criticised as unbelievable.

As in the case of the Turpin family in California, truth often really is stranger than fiction.

Harry Knights pictured in Vietnam with the US Marines (Image: Harry Knights)

Photographer Harry Knights pictured today (Image: Harry Knights)

In broad daylight, and under automatic gunfire from communist border guards, Frank – from Prenzlauer Berg in East Berlin – scaled a four metre high wall, braved the so-called ‘death strip’ and its tank traps, and then successfully hauled himself over a second four-metre plus wall.

A total of thirty-five rounds were reportedly fired by guards trying to prevent his escape.

He had risked his life, but he was safely in the West, his only injury a grazed leg from the wall climb, and with a life of freedom ahead of him – or so he thought.

What level of despair must have driven him to such a desperate, risky act – knowing that he would almost certainly come under gunfire?

What awful terror must have gripped him when – almost as soon as he’d started – his home-made ladder broke in two, and he ran, crouching, carrying the remaining part through the tank traps of the death strip to try to reach the western side of the wall?

We don’t know, because Frank has never – as far as I know – talked publicly about the incident. It’s the escape that the united Germany, Berlin, and – it seems – Frank himself would rather forget.

The story was reported the next day by the West Berlin newspapers. There were no photographs to accompany the reporter’s words, because none were thought to exist.

Even the Berlin Wall Memorial was not aware of photographs of the episode.

Harry Knights pictured in Vietnam with the US Marines (Image: Harry Knights)

But – remarkably – a photographic record does exist.

A US serviceman captured the whole thing on film – totally by accident.

But his photographs were immediately confiscated by the American military authorities and have only seen the light of day decades later.

That man was Harry Knights, then a young father with a young family, now a retired telephone engineer living in the United States.

On Thanksgiving Day 1976, when he’d only been in Berlin a month, he decided to go with a friend and take some photos from one of the viewing platforms on the western side of the wall while their wives were preparing a turkey dinner for their families.

They chose a platform at Bernauer Strasse, not far from where the Berlin Wall Memorial now stands, and where – soon after the wall was built in 1961 – people used to jump to freedom from apartment buildings, until the windows were walled up by the authorities in the East.

And then they started taking photos of people going about their daily business in the East.

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“We had an unobstructed view into East Berlin -- the streets, buildings, vehicles, and people going about their day walking from place to place,” says Harry. “I remember the stark contrast between East and West. In the West, everything was filled with colour - cars, buildings, store fronts, people's clothing.

“Looking into the East that day really struck me with the lack of colour. Everything seemed grey and dismal. The people walking the streets seemed to be subdued with no one talking or laughing.”

But then they noticed something odd.

“A teenaged boy was walking down the street carrying what appeared to be a home-made ladder. He would go a few steps and then would hide the ladder in a door front.

"He kept repeating this over and over, leading us to believe that he was intending to scale the Wall to try to escape.”

Remarkably, that’s exactly what happened – in broad daylight.

Border guards watch the wall for potential breaches on the day of Frank Krause's escape (Image: Harry Knights)

Harry’s sequence of photos show the boy – later named in the Berlin newspapers as Frank Krause – with his ladder by the red-and-white piped barrier that was as near as “Ossis” were supposed to get to the Wall – or, as it was euphemistically termed in official GDR circles, the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart.

And then he is over the first, eastern, wall – cowering in terror, his ladder half-broken. At this point, thankfully, the eastern guards hadn’t spotted him from their watchtower.

But this reprieve didn’t last long.

“When he went out of our sight again behind the western side of the wall, we ran down the tower to be on the ground when he jumped down.

"Almost as soon as we reached the ground, we saw his head come up over the top."

It was then that the guard tower to our right of that corner opened fire. The crack of an AK-47 pierced the quiet of that rainy Thanksgiving morning.

Immediately, the boy disappeared behind the Wall again, causing us to believe that he had been hit by the gunfire.”

Astonishingly, 15-year-old Frank – who by now must have been terrified, fearing his life was about to end in the feared death strip – then appeared on top of the western side of the Wall, and clambered down, to be greeted by Harry.

“We had just come to Berlin and knew almost no German and the boy knew no English, so there wasn't any intelligible conversation between us.

"We were, however, excitedly shaking his hand, and welcoming him to West Berlin.”

A German newspaper report of Frank Krause's escape

A newspaper in West Germany covers Frank Krause's repatriation

The boy was led away into a neighbouring building, and Harry assumed he would now be able to live a life of freedom in the West. Escapees were, as far as he knew, welcomed with open arms by the western authorities.

The next day, the West Berlin newspapers carried the story – without Harry’s confiscated photos – saying that Frank wanted to live with his aunt in the West, and that he had been escaping from unspecified problems at school.

Harry had just witnessed – and photographed – a piece of history, and taken what should have become an iconic set of photographs.

But the story doesn’t end happily.

A week later, that same West Berlin newspaper carried a follow-up piece. 15-year-old Frank was being sent back to the East. The West Berlin youth court had ruled that these unspecified “problems in school” weren’t serious enough to allow a minor to stay.

What happened to Frank afterwards? We know that so-called Republikflucht (meaning illegal emigration) was considered a serious crime in the East.

Those caught were imprisoned – their families often faced reprisals.

Harry would love to meet Frank and find out what happened to him. I believe he'd now be in his mid-fifties.

However all my attempts to contact him through former East German friends have failed.

What is unquestionable, is that what he did that day was remarkably brave. The dark forces that drove him to risk his life must have been powerful ones.

The teenage daughter of the Turpins succeeded in ending her siblings’ torment and captivity.

Frank was sent back to what he clearly regarded as the horrors of East Germany. I can only hope that – at some stage – his life took a turn for the better.

David Young's new book A Darker State out on 9 February 2018 published by Bonnier.